Today was Thursday and Day 4 in China ~The Update
I have been waking up between 5 and 6 AM everyday. I thought
the first few days, I wasn't going to have any Jet Leg but I have since been
proven wrong. Pretty positive I haven't been up past 10pm any night here. However, it has been between 95-105 degrees
here everyday, so the heat could be the reason.
It just makes for an exhausting day by the time everything is said and
done!
So today I went to the daycare. I had to be there by 8AM so
that I could do the morning greeting with Sandy(the other teacher) because it
was her last day before I would be taking over on Monday. The morning greeting pretty much is a way for
the parents to see that there big buck is being used wisely. We put a shape, object, profession, or just a
food on a board under the heading “What is this?” The kids have to then say it
if they know it, guess, or we tell them and they repeat it in English. It is
pretty much their ticket into school! After Morning Greeting, we went into the
classroom and started with a series of activities just to get the kids moving
and in an English mode. We then start something called circle time at 9AM. This involves signing, dancing and any other
engaging activity you can think of to get the kids speaking English. I thought my days of learning silly songs
were over; because I had enough of them memorized……definitely don’t have enough
for this group. These kids know more English silly songs then I do! I know what
I will be doing this weekend.
After Morning greeting the kids had chess lessons, however
only half of the class has it at a time, so the other half we took on a
walk. It had just rained a lot as I
mentioned before, so of course the kids jumped at every opportunity to get
their feet wet in a puddle. I would have
too had I not had sneakers on! Anyways,
the walk we used to help the kids identify all of their surroundings in English. I am pretty sure I spoke more Chinese on this
walk, but whatever, everything was repeated in English. We went from seeing fish in the pond, to
counting how many fish we saw, to then identifying what color the fish were.
They passed!
I found out that I get a 3 hour lunch break everyday. Today however, at 11:30am I was finished,
because I was going into Beijing
with Kevin to see some sights. But
imagine a 3 hour lunch break in our school system. No wonder these kids are there until 7 pm at
night. They all get fed, and then they take like a 2 hour nap. I wish we had
that in our schools!!!
I rode my bike home to find that Kevin was making dumplings…..I
at this point wished I had stayed and ate at the Kindergarten because they were
having rice. However, to my own
surprise, I loved these dumplings…..They were delicious. I don’t know if it was
the filling, but I actually ate about 5 of them. I boosted Kevin’s confidence a
little and told him they were the first dumplings I actually liked! He doesn’t
get much credit since he pretty much failed out of Madison
University in Wisconsin this past year. His parents said he had discipline problems
because they did everything for him…..(This is the typical Chinese Family
Story.)
So after Lunch, Kevin’s dad Jason took us to the subway stop
to go into downtown Beijing.
That is where I took so far all of the pictures in my photo gallery. Currently the Subway only has 3 running lines,
because the other lines aren’t finished yet.
They hope to have about 8 or 10 lines for the Olympics. Anyways, so with 3 lines it is a little
difficult to go exactly where you want to go.
We went to the very north of the downtown area. Kevin wanted to get me off the typical
tourist path(plus a lot of it I saw when we traveled here when living in Shanghai.) He took me to what use to be a very rich family’s
community. You could still see the ancient wall from 1000’s and 1000’s of years
ago. Today this area is split into
smaller communities that are pretty much in poverty. (See the photos for
confirmation!) Kevin took me inside all
kinds of streets that I would have never ventured into because I would have
felt that they were off limits. I saw
some very interesting cultural things, such as the ping ying written on the
wall from a child learning from their parents. We received nothing but blank
stares, and at times, very questioning looks.
After walking through these neighborhoods we took a turn south and ran
into the surrounding city wall. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Beijing’s city wall still
exists and the gates are still over present day roads. At this specific gate there is a pagoda
looking temple that is currently a coin museum.
We took the time to go into the museum and look at several different
currencies the Chinese have used over time.
This included carved shells at times. (Sorry no pictures allowed so I
can’t share them with you.) We climbed
the steps to the top of the Pagoda where there was a very nice view of the
downtown area. It looks the same as it
did 10 years ago I think, but Kevin says this is because Beijing really hasn’t changed much. He says it isn’t like Shanghai,
and the Beijing
people don’t like too much change.
After the coin temple, Kevin and I did a lot of walking. It
wasn’t very exciting so I won’t waste your time. We were pretty much lost, but
Kevin wouldn’t ask anyone where we were. So yes, I took it into my own hands to
find a bus map and ask some random person if they knew where we were. What do
you know….I actually understood them! We
made our way back to the subway following the directions I was given. Kevin
looked at me and says you can speak just fine, I said, I know, you just don’t
let me speak! He laughed!
We then took the subway to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden
City. I had been there before
but I wasn’t ready to head home and I didn’t really remember everything. We
just walked around and took some pictures. Kevin took me into the surrounding
gardens of the Forbidden City. They were
beautiful and I didn’t remember going in them before. It was so strange to be in one of the most congested
parts of the city, but to be behind this wall that didn’t allow any of them
reality to be present.
Unfortunately I had gotten Kevin to the end of the line, and
he had no more suggestions, so we jumped on the subway to go back to the place
we needed to be to catch the bus. To my surprise it is actually really really
easy to get downtown from where I will be living. This means there will be many many more
adventures into Beijing!
After returning home, I was disappointed with Rice pudding
for dinner…..if you like oatmeal, you would love it. Just imagine pieces of
rice so mushy they stick to your teach and taste like I don’t even know how to
describe it. Not bad though, 1 meal out
of 5 I didn’t like. It could be worse!!
Tomorrow brings no plans. I will probably explore this area
to get more acquainted with it. I will
move into my apartment tomorrow, after I have a morning filled with special Olympics
at the local stadium……not quite sure how a foreigners party turned into special
Olympics…..I will keep you updated!
